Yes, indeed - 'various'. The film in fact is credited as being directed by - take a deep breath - Edmund Goulding, Cedric Hardwicke, Frank Lloyd, Victor Saville, Robert Stevenson, Herbert Wilcox and René Clair. What's going on? It seems this project - the history of a London house - was launched to celebrate UK-US alliance in WWII, with profits going to charity, and features a staggering array of acting talent - to be honest it's a bit of a distraction the first time you see it, as you're constantly thinking 'Now who's that now?' or in my case, being unable to remember the name of Edward Everett Horton.
Kent Smith turns up at Ruth Warrick's house offering to buy it. There's an air raid, and she tells him the history. The land is bought and a house built in 1805. C. Aubrey Smith is the original owner, and he and his son Ray Milland protect Anna Neagle from evil neighbour Claude Rains, who eventually buys the house but dies in it. The Battle of Trafalgar (1805) happens, somewhat out of chronological order, then an iron manufacturer's wife comes up with the idea of making baths. Then maid Ida Lupino is whisked away to America by Brian Aherne - this is the sequence Clair directed.
Finally the house is a WWI hotel in which Robert Cummings stays and falls for Merle Oberon whilst guests include Roland Young and Gladys Cooper, who await their son's arrival, Una O'Connor (who is not Joyce Carey), and other guests including Nigel Bruce, blind Robert Coote and Richard Hayden.
With: Herbert Marshall, Edmund Gwenn, Charles Laughton, Reginald Gardiner, Billy Bevan, Dame Mae Whitty, Aubrey Mather (in air raid shelter), Halliwell Hobbes, Buster Keaton, Cecil Kellaway, Donald Crisp, Cedric Hardwicke, Eric Blore.
W.P. Lipscombe was the main writer, most of it being filmed in 1941 with the framing story added later - but not released (by RKO) until 1943. Other writers include Charles Brackett, R.C. Sherriff, James Hilton, Donald Ogden Stewart and John van Druten.
The Cohen Pictures release we saw had the most awful soundtrack in which it sounded like bad plumbing was constantly in the air; a shame. Anthony Collins wrote the music and the cinematographers are RKO regulars Robert de Grasse and Nick Musuraca and Russell Metty and Lee Garmes.
With its conclusion of the American saying 'We should rebuild the house' I would have liked a final British 'Look - I hardly know you' sort of line of resistance... in which we're still left in no doubt that they will get together and rebuild the house.
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